


A Mighty Pain to Love

by Cynosure



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst?, Ficlet, Freeform, Gen, M/M, Writing Exercise, put your slash goggles on or not, vague musings, works either way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 20:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynosure/pseuds/Cynosure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unrequited isn't the proper terminology. Unbalanced might be a more suitable descriptor. He isn't certain which is worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mighty Pain to Love

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, so forgive me. I have a therapy exercise that requires I write 500 words per week about whatever I please, this is the result. Unrequited/unbalanced love is an interesting thing to write about, and given I don't have experience with it, I'm gonna project it onto this sad baby. Hope you enjoy!

 

> _“A mighty pain to love it is,_   
> _And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;_   
> _But of all pains, the greatest pain_   
> _It is to love, but love in vain.”_   
> _― **Abraham Cowley**_

__

It isn’t a sharp, piercing pain that targets the heart and eases up on occasion only to return with the same impossibly intact intensity. It isn’t the kind of pains that makes the one who bears it want to scream and plead and fight if for nothing else but to stop the hurt. It doesn’t inspire action or an immediate downfall. It’s much more subtle than that.

It’s a dull, pervasive ache that starts heaviest in the chest and travels its way throughout every bone, every muscle, and every nerve until he is convinced that it is a very part of his being. A human made of water, bone, blood, skin, and heartache. He can forget that at some point, some brief period of time in his life, he didn’t exist in this state. Bitterness is a paralytic, he’s been told, but he isn’t sure that he _is_ bitter. He isn’t convinced that this isn’t deserved, that it isn’t a penance for all of the wrong that he’s done, a state of purgatory that he’s been sentenced to and since accepted.

The love still exists in all of its grandiosity. When eyes meet, when accidental touches call his attention, when soft laughter fills his ears, it is still there. It is his pain relief, the morphine that makes him forget the suffering but definitely does not eliminate it. He smiles and it’s genuine. It’s a selfless love coming from a selfish man, one that isn’t dependent on his own happiness but hinders on nurturing and protecting happiness for the person he holds most dear. Love is a motivator, he’s also been told. He accepts that analysis, folds and tucks it away as not opinion, but fact. There doesn’t exist a thing on earth or beyond that he would not do for the one sees that his own contentment is a façade, but chooses to ignore it.

Unrequited is the word most would choose to describe it, but he isn’t certain that is entirely accurate. There is a reciprocal love, certainly, but when placed on a balance of scales, there is a discrepancy. His side is heavier, more burdened. Perhaps it’s a result of having waited so long to love without questioning it. The thought had been so unfamiliar to him that when it finally occurred to him, it was a torrent rather than a trickle. It became something that he put his entire life into, even if he committed action after action that didn’t necessarily speak to the testament. Fear, confusion, and a near panic fueled him in the early days.

It’s become a more settled love. He’s resigned to it, accepted the facts and conditions of it. This ache that he is sure was meant for him after amassing a pile of mistakes and wrongs is only kept from eating him whole by the small flickers of love that is transmitted to him in smiles and increasingly infrequent visits. Priorities, he’s been told. His importance is different now. All that he hears is that it’s waning, that his usefulness is fading away. In a selfish thought, he can only hope that it goes slowly. He’d hang on by a thread for eternity.

__


End file.
